Space The Whale and the Hockey Stick

DIV ALIGN=CENTERa href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0908/NGC4631_4656_poepsel.jpg" IMG SRC="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0908/NGC4631_4656_poepsel_c720.jpg" alt="See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available."/a /DIV DIV STYLE="max-width:40em"P P b The Whale and the Hockey Stick /b br b Credit a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/lib/about_apod.html#srapply"Copyright/a: /b Josef Poepsel, Stefan Binnewies (a href="http://www.capella-observatory.com/"Capella Observatory/a) P p b Explanation: /b a href="http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/messier/xtra/ngc/n4631.html"NGC 4631/a is a big beautiful spiral galaxy a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010510.html"seen edge-on/a (top right) only 25 million light-years away towards the small northern constellation a href="http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/messier/map/CVn.html"Canes Venatici/a. This galaxy's slightly distorted wedge shape suggests to some a cosmic herring and to others the popular moniker of The Whale Galaxy. Either way, it is similar in size to our a href="http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/galaxy.html"own Milky Way/a. In a href="http://www.capella-observatory.com/ImageHTMLs/ Galaxies/NGC4631.htm"this gorgeous color image/a, the Whale's dark interstellar dust clouds, yellowish core, and young blue star clusters are easy to spot. A companion galaxy, the small elliptical NGC 4627, appears above the Whale Galaxy. At the lower left is another distorted galaxy, the hockey stick-shaped a href="http://www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/observers/n4656.html"NGC 4656/a. The distortions and mingling a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970224.html"trails/a of gas detected at other wavelengths suggest that all three galaxies have had a href="http://burro.cwru.edu/JavaLab/GalCrashWeb/main.html"close encounters/a with each other in their past. The Whale Galaxy is also known to have spouted a halo of hot gas glowing a href="http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/01_releases/ press_071901.html"in x-rays/a. p P script type="text/javascript" digg_url ='http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090821.html'; digg_skin = 'compact'; /script script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"/script /DIV
(Via NASA)